Re:The Tibetan meditation research of Herbert Benson
by DennisP on Tuesday November 26, 2019 @02:12PM
(#21641560)
I don't know much about tummo but I am working my way through The Mind Illuminated, a book on a type of mindfulness meditation that gets into pretty advanced levels, so I can answer from that perspective.
The book goes through several models of consciousness, but one is "moments of consciousness." In each of those moments, you could have your attention on the meditation object, or on something else ("distraction"). But you can also have moments in which you aren't conscious at all. Each moment is extremely brief, but if you have a lot of moments of unconsciousness, this is "dullness." Dullness is just as much a problem as distraction, and there are practices specifically to combat it.
If you're just trying not to think, you might be dealing well with distraction, but you might also have a lot of dullness. It's easy to think you're very good at meditating, when actually you just have dullness.
If you can fix both distraction and dullness, you can attain a high level of awareness of what's going on in your mind. This leads to the sort of insights that for Buddhists are the main point. It also has a lot of side benefits, like just being more present and alive in your everyday life.
The book goes through several models of consciousness, but one is "moments of consciousness." In each of those moments, you could have your attention on the meditation object, or on something else ("distraction"). But you can also have moments in which you aren't conscious at all. Each moment is extremely brief, but if you have a lot of moments of unconsciousness, this is "dullness." Dullness is just as much a problem as distraction, and there are practices specifically to combat it.
If you're just trying not to think, you might be dealing well with distraction, but you might also have a lot of dullness. It's easy to think you're very good at meditating, when actually you just have dullness.
If you can fix both distraction and dullness, you can attain a high level of awareness of what's going on in your mind. This leads to the sort of insights that for Buddhists are the main point. It also has a lot of side benefits, like just being more present and alive in your everyday life.